Do they make camera support gear that can do this?

[jax_rox]

How will a car driving along a highway, and then the camera spinning around, look like a car rolling over? If you want the car to look like it's rolling over, you need to make the car roll over..

I've said it before and I'll say it again: If you have no budget, you need to mae compromises on your shots - if you can't do it, then you need to cut/change it or figure out a way that you can do it. The reason you can't do a shot that big budgets movies do, it's because you don't have a budget. The shots may look simple, but there's a lot more to them.

[harmonica44]

This was one way I thought of compromising. Spinning the camera instead of showing the car role. Movies have done this before to simulate Earthquakes or the ground shaking. They will simulate it by shaking the camera, so I thought I could do something similar. I'll see what else I can come up with.

[jax_rox]

Except they're two very different things. You can simulate a shake easy, as you can simulate a spin. A car rolling over is not a car spinning in mid air, it's a car rolling over and over. The car itself would move from one position to the next as it rolls, not just spin in mid air.

[WalterB]

Use a toy to double as the car!

[wheatgrinder]

Put camera, with a long lens, in a barrel. lots of bubble wrap.. camera looking out the open end of the barrel...

Barrel is in the back of a pickup so the open end is facing out the back of the truck..

Shoot the whole thing in reverse..

START with the truck STOPPED and the barrel rolled so that the camera is at an upside down angle. This is the angle the "make believe movie car" came to rest... you might hold here for a minute or so..

As the truck starts pulling a way you start rolling the barrel in the bed of the truck.. now, you might need to rig something so the barrel can roll more than one time.. or just sorta pick it up and rotate it.. lots of banging and jarring.. then you stop rolling the barrel at the place you want the car to start rolling.. remember your shooting in reverse.. so this is where the car crash STARTS... keep driving the truck for the drive UP to the crash.. make sense?

Enhancements:

Have your camera and lens protected, add some flotsam, light weights bits of acoustic ceiling tile, some flour, old french fries, other bits of interesting junk you might fine flying off of a car loosely in the barrel..

shoot at 60p and use speed ramp effects to cover the obviously strange looking bits.. anything is believable if its slomo!


EDIT: I have no idea if this would work, seems doable but your mileage may vary.

[harmonica44]

Okay thanks I'll try it out. But if I shoot at 60p then I got 720p, which I would have to mesh with 1080p footage. Sometimes it's noticeable, sometimes not. I will practice something of that sort.

[PaulGriffith]

Wheat's idea sounds pretty killer, I want to try it haha.

We've been over the 1080p thing plenty, I till say downsize it all to 720 if some of your shots are. Makes everything easier.

Finally, we did a slow mo car spin/explosion that was a mix or practical and CG. It turned out ok. CG mixed with practical can go a long way for sure.

https://vimeo.com/31263479

[harmonica44]

Cool! That looks pretty good! I am doing practice scenes to want to meet industry standards though, and it seems that 1080p is the industry standard, and anything less, it could cause a movie to not be picked up. So I thought maybe I would do all my practice for 1080p footage, and other things to meet the standard. I could be wrong, but I have not seen a movie released in 720 in a long time. Can I ask how much it cost to shoot yours and how much the VFX cost?

[wheatgrinder]

and what industry is that? Most film festivals still project in SD!

[PaulGriffith]

I think it cost maybe $150 to shoot to feed everyone and a prop or two? We owned pretty much everything else from prior shoots and borrowed other stuff. The only CH out team didn't do was the actual model and animation of the SUV. We put and ad out, found a new team that had done a lot of 100% 3D stuff and wanted to work on blending plates with 3D. They liked our wmearlier stuff so we teamed up together. The did the 3D, we did all the compositing.

Like wheat said, at this level and especially for effects work nobody will bat an eye at 720p. Vimeo even automatically converts 1080 stuff when you upload it to 720 because it's easier for the viewer. You have to dig through a menu and often restart the upload to get 1080. Practice with the stuff you have. You need slow-mo? Practice with 720. When you're working on a feature that your practiced and proven skills have helped to secure funding, team members and generally make possible you can then rent a FS700, RED or even a Phantom and do some killer slow mo at 1080p - 4K. You'll know a bit more about what you're doing at that point.

Besides, if you really want to argue industry standard you need to be mastering in AT LEAST 2k for legit theater distribution. A t2i can't do that anyway.

[harmonica44]

Yeah that's true, but I figure it's still closer to 2K than 720. Even though most theaters project in SD, I want to practice making things, in order to work towards, hopefully making a feature and getting DVD distribution. And those industries seem to want 1080p cause of blue ray demand.